1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a tool for coiling a fire hose and, more particularly, a tool that is hand held and can be used by a user to coil a fire hose lying on a supporting surface without any direct contact between the user and the fire hose.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are numerous inventions that have been made to coil fire hoses and the like. Unfortunately, the prior devices suffer from serious disadvantages and the primary method in use today is a manual method only whereby a fire worker or workers manually coil the hoses following use without the assistance of any reels or tools. One prior device is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,168,260 entitled "Device for Rolling Up Canvas Hose", said patent naming A. L. Kittelson as inventor and being issued on Feb. 2nd, 1965. Generally, this invention is a reel that is mounted onto a fire truck. There are numerous known devices that are designed to be mounted onto fire trucks. However, these types of devices take up space on the fire truck and space is extremely limited. In addition, it is necessary to drag the hoses to the truck, usually when they are filled with water, and to connect the hoses into the winding device. There are also known devices that use a reel or turntable oriented in a horizontal position on the ground (e.g. see U.S. Pat. No. 2,197,767 entitled "Hose Winder or Reel", said patent naming H.G. Neale as inventor and being issued on Apr. 23, 1940. The known devices are either not portable at all or they do not have the degree of portability required to replace the manual method. The hoses must be dragged to these devices. In addition, the prior devices are expensive to manufacture, or they are too heavy, or they take up too much space, or they do not readily permit the coiling of hoses in various positions, or they are not as efficient as rolling the hoses by hand.